John Grisham is a lawyer and best-selling legal thriller author. He knows the law. He knows the power of words.

But his remarks about overly harsh sentences regarding child pornography, which he made in a wide-ranging interview on the U.S. judicial system with The Telegraph, aren't going over well, to say the least.

Grisham said judges have "gone crazy" over the past 30 years, locking up far too many people, from white collar criminals like Martha Stewart, to black teenagers on minor drug charges, and those who had viewed child porn online.

"We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who've never harmed anybody, would never touch a child," he said in interview to promote his new novel, "Gray Mountain."

"But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn."

Grisham adds, "These are people who haven't hurt anybody. They deserve some type of punishment, whatever, but 10 years in prison?"

He went on to share the story of a friend from law school who was caught in a "sting" operation and served time in prison for downloading child pornography.

"His drinking was out of control, and he went to a website. It was labeled '16-year-old wannabe hookers' or something like that'. ... So he went there. Downloaded some stuff — it was 16-year-old girls who looked 30. He shouldn't have done it. It was stupid, but it wasn't 10-year-old boys. He didn't touch anything. And, God, a week later there was a knock on the door: 'FBI!' and it was sting set up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to catch people — sex offenders — and he went to prison for three years."

He did add, "I have no sympathy for real pedophiles," he said, "God, please lock those people up. But so many of these guys do not deserve harsh prison sentences, and that's what they're getting."